Evaluation of cardiac tamponade cases

Cardiac tamponade is defined as clinical process which caused by fluid accumulation at pericardium and arising from that there is also decreasing at cardiac output and heart rate. It must diagnosed and be treated fastly because it’s a life threating situation and it may causes sudden and unaccepted deaths.
79 cases investigated retrospectively in the years of 2007-2011 and among the 7500 autopsies which are done in 5 year process at Council of Forensic Medicine, Adana Group Administration. Results are investigated as age distiribution, genders, localization of situation which causes cardiac tamponade, blood amount which accumulated at pericardium, old infarction areas and macroscopic and microscopic signs which is accompanying cardiac tamponade.
63 (79,7%) of them were male. 18 (22,8%) of them were between 61-70 ages and at the second rank 13 (16,5%) of them were between the ages of 51-60. The youngest case was 18, the oldest case was 86 years old. Cardiac tamponade were resulted from dissecting aortic aneurysm rupture in 51 cases, myocardium rupture in 26 cases, left ventricle rupture in one case, pulmonary artery rupture in 1 case. Results were investigated in the way of localization of the responsible situation: ascending aorta in 41 cases and the second most common localization was left ventricular posterior wall rupture.
Death cause can’t be understanded totally without necessary histopathologic and toxicologic investigations in sudden and suspicious deaths. So at these deaths autopsies have to be done.